<strong>Apple should think about contracting a company like Terratec or M-Audio to bundle pro sound cards with the PowerMacs. Every PC you see out there usually has a Sound Blaster Audigy card, and something like bundled Klipsch speakers.
I think AGP8x isn't really a concern right now, considering I doubt more than a small percentage of off the shelf PCs have this technology. Most of the graphics cards coming out now will only be saturated by the 4x bus, so you aren't going to see huge performance hits.
Firewire 2 doesn't exist yet, so Apple will implement this technology when it's out. USB 2 isn't really that important right now, since most devices you hook up can't really take advantage of that speed (except hard drives).
You're exactly right, Apple is just senseless usually. It is really that hard for them to create a case with ample drive bays? Is it really that hard for them to implement current technologies into their computers? No, so do it!
Why would they bundle Terratec or M-Audio. They own Emagic who makes Audiowerks cards. A vast minority of computer users have more than stereo speakers attached to their computers. Too much work for too few IMO.
AGP 8x is not needed. Even 4x handles the 9700 Pro just fine. I think it's a non issue right now.
Firwire2 is a non issue unless you're talking about the miniscule FW RAID products.
Apple is not senseless. The Powermac towers are not huge..they're logically oriented inside. The typical PC tower is half empty. Only a few users cram their machines full of stuff. I'd rather have one 80GB drive than two 40GB eating up power from my PS.
[quote] Apple's PowerMacs are priced ridiculously because they are afraid to abandon a price structure that they have used since Jobs returned. <hr></blockquote>
There's no room. The eMac and iMac must have a suitable range of options meaning that $1500 is the lowest a Powermac could be without eating into iMac sales. There's not enough range in the processor line. If eMacs and iMacs occupied up to 1GHZ and them the Pro line was 1.2 1.4 and 1.6ghz then that would be a little easier.
I don't mind the $3k machines. There are people who will naturally gravitate towards the top computer. I remember when even typical consumers would sometimes purchase the 8100/110 when it came out years ago. That was a 5499 charge to their credit card OUCH! But there are people that can afford it and Apple is not into leaving money on the table. We all want lower prices but that's natural for anyone to want to be financially responsible. The art of selling is to keep the price as high as possible...that conflicts with the consumer's ethos of buying as low as possible. We'll be argueing this for our whole lives..guaranteed.
I wasn't aware that Emagic made sound cards so perhaps this could be one of the benefits of their purchase. How are the Audiowerks cards? I mentioned those 2 companies because I think they have high regard in terms of their products.
The towers aren't huge, but neither is my beige G3 which fits a floppy, CD-RW, zip. and DVD-ROM. Where the zip drive is you can fit a full size drive, which makes room for 3. I'm probably wrong but I think the 9600s were slightly taller so you could fit even more drive bays. Also, the beige has RCA jacks, S video i/o AV in the back. This is how you make a tower. Apple seems to do a lot of things with form over function in mind. I can tell you that there is plenty of room in my Quicksilver to fit stuff.
I don't really think $3000 is all that much money either for a computer, but when you compare it to the rest of the PC world it is. The gap is way too big with PowerMac pricing when you compare the features you get.
I think Apple's pro software titles, with the possible exception of QT Pro (which is pro in ability, non-pro in interface IMO) are all very deserving of the "Pro" title.
<strong>I think Apple's pro software titles, with the possible exception of QT Pro (which is pro in ability, non-pro in interface IMO) are all very deserving of the "Pro" title.
Isn't this really just about hardware?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Speaking of interface...Apple has a lot of work to do. The Logic Audio interface is abominable!
Say what you will but price matters more than anything else. If it didn't, we'd all be driving Aston Martins to our summer beach houses and snorting coke off our girlfriend's tits while the wife takes the kids and the nanny out for a day of boutique hopping.
______
edit: sorry, re-reading yucky typos and I couldn't stand it.
<strong>Say what you will but price matters more than anything else. If it didn't, we'd all be driving Aston Martins to our summer beach houses and snorting coke of our girlfriends tits while the wife takes the kids and the nanny out for a day of boutique hopping.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The original poster is absolutely correct. Apple?s use of the words ?PRO? and ?POWER? in their hardware names is completely over the top. I personally believe it to be a major cause of competitive comparisons and harsh criticisms of their hardware that might otherwise be avoided.
By calling them ?PRO? speakers, they suggest they are comparable to other professional grade speakers. They are not even comparable to some of the cheap speakers that are bundled with PC?s. But that is beside the point. If they just called them Apple speakers, then everyone would be pleased with their performance for what they are intended. By calling them ?PRO? speakers, they are placed in a different category. The same goes for the mouse and the keyboard. What exactly is professional about those items? What ?PRO? features do they boast?
By using the word ?POWER? to name their ?PRO? desktops and notebooks, they are begging to be challenged. A ?POWER? system as opposed to what? The powerless competition? Naturally, competitors and owners of competing products will want to test that claim against their own systems to see where the true power lies. More often than not, Apple comes up short in the ?POWER? department. How many times have you encountered, (or even offered) the response to the PC vs. Mac debate, ?No one buy Macs for raw power?? Well guess what, the first thing Apple wants you to think about is ?POWER? when considering their ?PRO? machines. To prove this, you need look further than the naming scheme.
Worse than being an undeserved moniker, it is also the height of pretentiousness. This display of unwarranted conceit is absolutely repugnant. Worse, it belittles the consumer (i) line. If one of two products are to be associated with ?POWER?, then what of the other product line? Perhaps this is why the consumer line must be starved of basic features such as 133 MHz + sys bus, ATA 100, 7200 RPM HD, 1GHz + processor, and so on.
Instead of PowerMac, why not call it the TowerMac? Instead of Apple Pro Speaker, Mouse, and Keyboard, why not call it Apple Speaker, Mouse, Keyboard. Drop the pretentious swagger and get on with the business of making computers that are worthy of the name they wear. Quit telling the world how great you are and just show us with the performance of your computers. That is the only thing that will make a ?PRO? think of ?POWER? when they think of a Mac.
Gah...I was forced to use an Apple Pro Keyboard again at school today.
I made so many typos that I about wanted to slam my fist down on the thing as hard as I could, but I don't really want to have to pay the school 60 bucks for that piece of trash.
It's flat. All about looks. No keyboard connected to a desktop (I'll make an exception for laptop keyboards) should be like that. The keys are fat and you just can't type very well.
As a little test, I opened Mavis Beacon 9 (A typing tutor) and went into one of the typing games. I was surprised to find that I could actually do 101 WPM (mistakes accounted for) on the damn thing...I must be doing 125 right now on my MacAlly.
Although MacAlly still has some issues with using USB connectivity (read: the timing is off a bit sometimes and you might get double letters every once in a while, though this has been fixed for the most part,) Apple needs to take a clue from them and make a real, functioning keyboard.
As for the Pro Mouse and Speakers..Power**** hardware et al., nothing but good things to say about them.
Type 125 WPM? :eek: That might explain how you replied to 9 posts in, like, 10 min. Someone should start a topic: "Post your wpm scores" or something like that. I won't. I can't type that fast.
Anyway, I can't stand ALL of apple's USB keyboards, but I do like the ADB keyboard that came with my G3. Oh, and the Laptop keyboard (the one I'm using to type this) isn't bad however it could use a wrist cushion. :cool:
Ok, so were talking periphs? Apple should definitely stick to the Pro and Power monikers. It's just a little subliminal hint that needs constant repetition, this is a (proven) more powerful marketing technique that more than offsets the occasional lexical disappointment soem users.
But the keyboard does suck, big time. Maybe I'm just just used to bigger bulkier keyboards. I have a couple of those big weighty IBM keyboards with the pronounced upward curve (from 1984!). All steel base; telephone style cord! The keys have a nice click to them, it's the closest thing to a typewriter that you'll find in a keyboard. My school was throwing them out, I actually could have taken a dozen or so, but I took the two cleanest examples and an extra detachable cord.
So, maybe my opinion is ruined by bad (very bad) typing habits. I'm in the 50-60wpm range but I don't touch type. I look at the keyboard a lot and type mainly with index, middle fingers and thumb, yet from the sheer volume of typing that I've done I find that I know where a lot of keys are instinctively. That is untill I put my fingers on the home row and try to do it the proper way, then it all gets shot to shjt!
Maybe it's the feedback fo those old keyboards, that reassuring click, but I find I'm a lot slower on the Apple keyboards in our lab.
It all depends if you think of aPple products as the Formula 1 of computers or the Aston Martin.
Power is a great term to sell to the Formula 1 minded computer buyer. Fast is best and they don't mind the bumps. ** A typical PC user **
I guess aPple keeps using it to lure switchers.
The aPple buyer on the other hand is more quality minded. They are willing to sacrifice some "Power" for a smoother ride.
aPple's use of Power and Pro certainly does not live up to its meaning for many things. In their defense, they are trying to at least look as though they can produce Professional/Power stuff with the new Server systems. Sadly they too have a long way to go before people think of them at the same professional level as Sun, HP, SGI, etc. servers.
-----------------------------------------
I will probably be long dead before aPple releases a Realtime OS. So I won't hold my breath waiting.
But, it's intersting you mention an exclusive marque like Aston Martin.
Aston Martin, Jaguar, Range Rover, all owned by Ford.
Ferrari, Maserati. Owned by Fiat.
Rolls Royce now belongs to BMW.
Bentley, Lamborghini, and Bugatti are under VW.
While each of these companies makes very top shelf kit, in most cases they would not survive without the ownership (and dollars) of a larger parent who makes decidedly more modest transport.
Lesson, be weary of a drive into the high end, it's difficult to support without a BIG installed base of something cheap. Lambo, Rolls, Bentley, and Aston for example, all found themselves with high profit limited offerings, but without the capacity to develop modern replacements. The market had changed beneath them, and they couldn't put their profit into the next generation because investment seemed too risky given the cost and volumes. They all needed a rich (if boring) owner. Bugatti only proved how impossible the task was in it's attempt to resurrect the badge. Bankrupt. The costs of research and development were too high even for limited runs on million dollar machines.
Apple has similar volume/cost predicaments. A replacement CPU is long overdue, but the cost of developing it for a limited market is high. So Apple soldiers on with what they've got (which is still good) but has difficulty preparing the new platform.
<strong>You may be right about Logic's UI, Eugene, I can't even remember if I've even seen screenshots. But, hey, that's what Apple adds to the mix.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And yet, given my previous post, Apple still seems oddly incompatible with a foreign owner. Ford ownership has not damaged the Aston Brand, or VW ruined Lambo, but these auto cases may be a bit different. There's a reason for that, I think. Bear with me...
I hate Steve Jobs, or not Jobs exactly, but the cult of Jobs, well maybe Jobs too. He is very lucky, and very bold, and not nearly as skilled as people credit him. He has sustained his career largely through two main strengths, by being one of the first on the scene and by the good grace of a charisma that many politicians, and a few celebrities, would kill for. This has allowed a "cult of Jobs" to grow around him, but he was not, for a very long time, a good, or even decent, businessman. He has come to his business sense late in life, he was not a corporate prodigy like Gates or, gasp, Dell. But he was there, on the ground floor, and he had a winning delivery and an incomparable cachet. Yet he failed badly in two ventures: Apple v1, and NeXT.
Forced out of Apple, he would never have gotten NeXT off the ground if he wasn't Steve Jobs. With NeXT limited and shrinking (though in many ways brilliant) he would never have gotten the price he did for it, if he wasn't Steve Jobs the techno messiah returning to Apple. It was a hail mary pass on Apple's part, and they connected, but NeXT was going nowhere on its own, and Steve was very lucky to find Apple in such a desperate state.
Now Apple and Jobs are tied together: They're both brands with very strong recognition, but also with very strong ties, and neither would be as strong without the other. The popular belief about Jobs' return is that his plan saved Apple, but that's only minimally true, his name is what really saved them. In a broader sense you could say it's his vision, and yet that is also not really as true as saying that the community's vision of him is what really saved Apple (the brand).
Steve will not ever relax control on Apple, ever. And, for now, none of the community wants anyone else for the job. Indeed, there is no one else who can do it now. Jobs has defined it, he is the icon of it, iCEO!
There are other reasons, too, why Apple won't be foreign owned, reasons that are unique to the 'platform' wars, but Jobs is a big one.
First off, the 'Power' moniker came from the PowerPC. By that metric, it's still perfectly appropriate.
As far as the keyboard and mouse go: The Apple pro mouse is wonderful. It's crisp, incredibly precise and it feels solid to me. If all applications supported click-and-hold for contextual menus I'd be in hog heaven. The Logitech optical mouse I have at work certainly isn't bad, but I can't use multibutton mice as comfortably, and the buttons feel flimsy next to the whole-top motion of the Apple mouse. Since I use it the same way I use the Apple, as a fingertip mouse, the scroll wheel is in such an awkward position that I never use it.
The keyboard took a little getting used to, admittedly. Going from my old Apple Extended Keyboard and the sweet old Digital keyboard I had at work to the new Apple and Dell models took some adjustment. But I'm happy to report that I like the Apple - it's buttery smooth and silent - and the Dell, while not as crisp as the Digital, is perfectly serviceable (and loud!). They're both pretty flat, because that's the new ergonomic rule to encourage people to keep their wrists up.
Comments
<strong>Apple should think about contracting a company like Terratec or M-Audio to bundle pro sound cards with the PowerMacs. Every PC you see out there usually has a Sound Blaster Audigy card, and something like bundled Klipsch speakers.
I think AGP8x isn't really a concern right now, considering I doubt more than a small percentage of off the shelf PCs have this technology. Most of the graphics cards coming out now will only be saturated by the 4x bus, so you aren't going to see huge performance hits.
Firewire 2 doesn't exist yet, so Apple will implement this technology when it's out. USB 2 isn't really that important right now, since most devices you hook up can't really take advantage of that speed (except hard drives).
You're exactly right, Apple is just senseless usually. It is really that hard for them to create a case with ample drive bays? Is it really that hard for them to implement current technologies into their computers? No, so do it!
[ 09-02-2002: Message edited by: murbot ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
Why would they bundle Terratec or M-Audio. They own Emagic who makes Audiowerks cards. A vast minority of computer users have more than stereo speakers attached to their computers. Too much work for too few IMO.
AGP 8x is not needed. Even 4x handles the 9700 Pro just fine. I think it's a non issue right now.
Firwire2 is a non issue unless you're talking about the miniscule FW RAID products.
Apple is not senseless. The Powermac towers are not huge..they're logically oriented inside. The typical PC tower is half empty. Only a few users cram their machines full of stuff. I'd rather have one 80GB drive than two 40GB eating up power from my PS.
[quote] Apple's PowerMacs are priced ridiculously because they are afraid to abandon a price structure that they have used since Jobs returned. <hr></blockquote>
There's no room. The eMac and iMac must have a suitable range of options meaning that $1500 is the lowest a Powermac could be without eating into iMac sales. There's not enough range in the processor line. If eMacs and iMacs occupied up to 1GHZ and them the Pro line was 1.2 1.4 and 1.6ghz then that would be a little easier.
I don't mind the $3k machines. There are people who will naturally gravitate towards the top computer. I remember when even typical consumers would sometimes purchase the 8100/110 when it came out years ago. That was a 5499 charge to their credit card OUCH! But there are people that can afford it and Apple is not into leaving money on the table. We all want lower prices but that's natural for anyone to want to be financially responsible. The art of selling is to keep the price as high as possible...that conflicts with the consumer's ethos of buying as low as possible. We'll be argueing this for our whole lives..guaranteed.
The towers aren't huge, but neither is my beige G3 which fits a floppy, CD-RW, zip. and DVD-ROM. Where the zip drive is you can fit a full size drive, which makes room for 3. I'm probably wrong but I think the 9600s were slightly taller so you could fit even more drive bays. Also, the beige has RCA jacks, S video i/o AV in the back. This is how you make a tower. Apple seems to do a lot of things with form over function in mind. I can tell you that there is plenty of room in my Quicksilver to fit stuff.
I don't really think $3000 is all that much money either for a computer, but when you compare it to the rest of the PC world it is. The gap is way too big with PowerMac pricing when you compare the features you get.
Isn't this really just about hardware?
<strong>I think Apple's pro software titles, with the possible exception of QT Pro (which is pro in ability, non-pro in interface IMO) are all very deserving of the "Pro" title.
Isn't this really just about hardware?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Speaking of interface...Apple has a lot of work to do. The Logic Audio interface is abominable!
______
edit: sorry, re-reading yucky typos and I couldn't stand it.
[ 09-03-2002: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
<strong>Say what you will but price matters more than anything else. If it didn't, we'd all be driving Aston Martins to our summer beach houses and snorting coke of our girlfriends tits while the wife takes the kids and the nanny out for a day of boutique hopping.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Some of us DO live like that!
The original poster is absolutely correct. Apple?s use of the words ?PRO? and ?POWER? in their hardware names is completely over the top. I personally believe it to be a major cause of competitive comparisons and harsh criticisms of their hardware that might otherwise be avoided.
By calling them ?PRO? speakers, they suggest they are comparable to other professional grade speakers. They are not even comparable to some of the cheap speakers that are bundled with PC?s. But that is beside the point. If they just called them Apple speakers, then everyone would be pleased with their performance for what they are intended. By calling them ?PRO? speakers, they are placed in a different category. The same goes for the mouse and the keyboard. What exactly is professional about those items? What ?PRO? features do they boast?
By using the word ?POWER? to name their ?PRO? desktops and notebooks, they are begging to be challenged. A ?POWER? system as opposed to what? The powerless competition? Naturally, competitors and owners of competing products will want to test that claim against their own systems to see where the true power lies. More often than not, Apple comes up short in the ?POWER? department. How many times have you encountered, (or even offered) the response to the PC vs. Mac debate, ?No one buy Macs for raw power?? Well guess what, the first thing Apple wants you to think about is ?POWER? when considering their ?PRO? machines. To prove this, you need look further than the naming scheme.
Worse than being an undeserved moniker, it is also the height of pretentiousness. This display of unwarranted conceit is absolutely repugnant. Worse, it belittles the consumer (i) line. If one of two products are to be associated with ?POWER?, then what of the other product line? Perhaps this is why the consumer line must be starved of basic features such as 133 MHz + sys bus, ATA 100, 7200 RPM HD, 1GHz + processor, and so on.
Instead of PowerMac, why not call it the TowerMac? Instead of Apple Pro Speaker, Mouse, and Keyboard, why not call it Apple Speaker, Mouse, Keyboard. Drop the pretentious swagger and get on with the business of making computers that are worthy of the name they wear. Quit telling the world how great you are and just show us with the performance of your computers. That is the only thing that will make a ?PRO? think of ?POWER? when they think of a Mac.
I made so many typos that I about wanted to slam my fist down on the thing as hard as I could, but I don't really want to have to pay the school 60 bucks for that piece of trash.
It's flat. All about looks. No keyboard connected to a desktop (I'll make an exception for laptop keyboards) should be like that. The keys are fat and you just can't type very well.
As a little test, I opened Mavis Beacon 9 (A typing tutor) and went into one of the typing games. I was surprised to find that I could actually do 101 WPM (mistakes accounted for) on the damn thing...I must be doing 125 right now on my MacAlly.
Although MacAlly still has some issues with using USB connectivity (read: the timing is off a bit sometimes and you might get double letters every once in a while, though this has been fixed for the most part,) Apple needs to take a clue from them and make a real, functioning keyboard.
As for the Pro Mouse and Speakers..Power**** hardware et al., nothing but good things to say about them.
<img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
Anyway, I can't stand ALL of apple's USB keyboards, but I do like the ADB keyboard that came with my G3. Oh, and the Laptop keyboard (the one I'm using to type this) isn't bad however it could use a wrist cushion. :cool:
[ 09-03-2002: Message edited by: Ebby ]</p>
<strong>
Speaking of interface...Apple has a lot of work to do. The Logic Audio interface is abominable!</strong><hr></blockquote>
I've been a Logic user since version 2.0, and the interface is just fine thankyouverymuch.
<strong>
I've been a Logic user since version 2.0, and the interface is just fine thankyouverymuch.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I guess after a period of frustration it becomes 'natural,' but even my friend says the UI takes getting used to.
Apple at least has to freshen up the look and feel.
But the keyboard does suck, big time. Maybe I'm just just used to bigger bulkier keyboards. I have a couple of those big weighty IBM keyboards with the pronounced upward curve (from 1984!). All steel base; telephone style cord! The keys have a nice click to them, it's the closest thing to a typewriter that you'll find in a keyboard. My school was throwing them out, I actually could have taken a dozen or so, but I took the two cleanest examples and an extra detachable cord.
So, maybe my opinion is ruined by bad (very bad) typing habits. I'm in the 50-60wpm range but I don't touch type. I look at the keyboard a lot and type mainly with index, middle fingers and thumb, yet from the sheer volume of typing that I've done I find that I know where a lot of keys are instinctively. That is untill I put my fingers on the home row and try to do it the proper way, then it all gets shot to shjt!
Maybe it's the feedback fo those old keyboards, that reassuring click, but I find I'm a lot slower on the Apple keyboards in our lab.
<strong>
I guess after a period of frustration it becomes 'natural,' but even my friend says the UI takes getting used to.
Apple at least has to freshen up the look and feel.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That would be like Apple buying out Quark and changing the look and feel. If they did that, they would piss off a LOT of users.
Power is a great term to sell to the Formula 1 minded computer buyer. Fast is best and they don't mind the bumps. ** A typical PC user **
I guess aPple keeps using it to lure switchers.
The aPple buyer on the other hand is more quality minded. They are willing to sacrifice some "Power" for a smoother ride.
aPple's use of Power and Pro certainly does not live up to its meaning for many things. In their defense, they are trying to at least look as though they can produce Professional/Power stuff with the new Server systems. Sadly they too have a long way to go before people think of them at the same professional level as Sun, HP, SGI, etc. servers.
-----------------------------------------
I will probably be long dead before aPple releases a Realtime OS. So I won't hold my breath waiting.
You may be right about Logic's UI, Eugene, I can't even remember if I've even seen screenshots. But, hey, that's what Apple adds to the mix.
But, it's intersting you mention an exclusive marque like Aston Martin.
Aston Martin, Jaguar, Range Rover, all owned by Ford.
Ferrari, Maserati. Owned by Fiat.
Rolls Royce now belongs to BMW.
Bentley, Lamborghini, and Bugatti are under VW.
While each of these companies makes very top shelf kit, in most cases they would not survive without the ownership (and dollars) of a larger parent who makes decidedly more modest transport.
Lesson, be weary of a drive into the high end, it's difficult to support without a BIG installed base of something cheap. Lambo, Rolls, Bentley, and Aston for example, all found themselves with high profit limited offerings, but without the capacity to develop modern replacements. The market had changed beneath them, and they couldn't put their profit into the next generation because investment seemed too risky given the cost and volumes. They all needed a rich (if boring) owner. Bugatti only proved how impossible the task was in it's attempt to resurrect the badge. Bankrupt. The costs of research and development were too high even for limited runs on million dollar machines.
Apple has similar volume/cost predicaments. A replacement CPU is long overdue, but the cost of developing it for a limited market is high. So Apple soldiers on with what they've got (which is still good) but has difficulty preparing the new platform.
...
That is one of the most clear, defined and salient posts you have ever made. I agree %100.
<strong>You may be right about Logic's UI, Eugene, I can't even remember if I've even seen screenshots. But, hey, that's what Apple adds to the mix.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.emagic.de/english/news/2002/osxScreen1.html"; target="_blank">http://www.emagic.de/english/news/2002/osxScreen1.html</a>;
<img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
I hate Steve Jobs, or not Jobs exactly, but the cult of Jobs, well maybe Jobs too. He is very lucky, and very bold, and not nearly as skilled as people credit him. He has sustained his career largely through two main strengths, by being one of the first on the scene and by the good grace of a charisma that many politicians, and a few celebrities, would kill for. This has allowed a "cult of Jobs" to grow around him, but he was not, for a very long time, a good, or even decent, businessman. He has come to his business sense late in life, he was not a corporate prodigy like Gates or, gasp, Dell. But he was there, on the ground floor, and he had a winning delivery and an incomparable cachet. Yet he failed badly in two ventures: Apple v1, and NeXT.
Forced out of Apple, he would never have gotten NeXT off the ground if he wasn't Steve Jobs. With NeXT limited and shrinking (though in many ways brilliant) he would never have gotten the price he did for it, if he wasn't Steve Jobs the techno messiah returning to Apple. It was a hail mary pass on Apple's part, and they connected, but NeXT was going nowhere on its own, and Steve was very lucky to find Apple in such a desperate state.
Now Apple and Jobs are tied together: They're both brands with very strong recognition, but also with very strong ties, and neither would be as strong without the other. The popular belief about Jobs' return is that his plan saved Apple, but that's only minimally true, his name is what really saved them. In a broader sense you could say it's his vision, and yet that is also not really as true as saying that the community's vision of him is what really saved Apple (the brand).
Steve will not ever relax control on Apple, ever. And, for now, none of the community wants anyone else for the job. Indeed, there is no one else who can do it now. Jobs has defined it, he is the icon of it, iCEO!
There are other reasons, too, why Apple won't be foreign owned, reasons that are unique to the 'platform' wars, but Jobs is a big one.
As far as the keyboard and mouse go: The Apple pro mouse is wonderful. It's crisp, incredibly precise and it feels solid to me. If all applications supported click-and-hold for contextual menus I'd be in hog heaven. The Logitech optical mouse I have at work certainly isn't bad, but I can't use multibutton mice as comfortably, and the buttons feel flimsy next to the whole-top motion of the Apple mouse. Since I use it the same way I use the Apple, as a fingertip mouse, the scroll wheel is in such an awkward position that I never use it.
The keyboard took a little getting used to, admittedly. Going from my old Apple Extended Keyboard and the sweet old Digital keyboard I had at work to the new Apple and Dell models took some adjustment. But I'm happy to report that I like the Apple - it's buttery smooth and silent - and the Dell, while not as crisp as the Digital, is perfectly serviceable (and loud!). They're both pretty flat, because that's the new ergonomic rule to encourage people to keep their wrists up.